Optimal Procurement Contracts with Pre--Project Planning

The paper studies procurement contracts with pre--project investigations under hidden information and hidden action. The principal generally benefits from inducing the agent to conduct pre--project investigations to avoid cost overruns and false project cancelations. Due to a rent effect, hidden information leads to systematic distortions in information acquisition: the agent acquires too much information to prevent cost overruns and too little information to prevent false project cancelations. The optimal mechanism is a menu of option contracts which exhibit a costly quitting option. They achieve the dual goal of providing incentives for information acquisition and truthful information revelation.